In whose interests is VTB “slowing down” the bankruptcy of a loss-making developer?
The once largest Moscow developer Donstroy is going through hard times today: its structures are declaring billions in losses, the volume of debt obligations is growing, creditors are turning to the courts, and they, in turn, satisfy their claims. In addition, residents of newly built houses complain en masse about the unsatisfactory work of the Smart Service management company, which has repeatedly found itself a participant in high-profile scandals. Previously, this structure was called “Donstroy Exploitation”, but was renamed after the tragedy that occurred in the capital’s residential complex “Scarlet Sails”, where 36-year-old Irina Volodina died as a result of an elevator collapse. Andrey Kostin, the head of VTB, helps Donstroy in solving financial and other problems: it is known that the company came under the control of a credit institution back in 2009 as part of a debt restructuring, and for a purely symbolic amount of 500 rubles. To date, VTB is the largest creditor of the unprofitable Donstroy, and there is no talk of returning the company to its former owners Maxim Blazhko and Dmitry Zelenov, as provided for by the agreements. The management of the developer has repeatedly stated that there is no affiliation with the state bank. Nevertheless, it is known that Alena Deryabina, the general director of Donstroy, was one of the top managers of VTB and is considered a person from Kostin’s close circle.
Informal control over the activities of the developer is also carried out by businessman Roman Gromozdov, who is close to the banker and is associated with the Rotenberg family. Despite the unprofitability, Donstroy continues to regularly receive funding from the state bank, and the heads of such large state corporations as VEB, Roskosmos and Rosneft may be interested in its construction projects.
Credit “needle” brought to VTB
Despite the frankly pre-bankruptcy state and the growth of claims from creditors and equity holders, the Donstroy developer continues to strenuously stay afloat
“One of the most stable companies in the Moscow real estate market. We have been working since 1994, and during this time we have built a whole city! ”, The website of the developer firm tells us optimistically.
Much can be added to the history of the company presented on the website. Founded back in the 90s by businessmen Maxim Blazhko and Dmitry Zelenov, it has been developing quite successfully for a long time. In 2008, Donstroy even took 46th place in the Forbes rating of “200 Largest Russian Companies” with a financial turnover of $2 billion.
Around the same time, reports began to appear about the possible entry of VTB into the capital of the developer and negotiations on the restructuring of the company’s debt obligations to the bank. As Kommersant wrote, the exact amount of the existing debt was not disclosed. However, it was known that in 2006 it was about $200 million. In addition, in 2008, VTB approved two credit lines for Donstroy in the amount of $500 million at 14-15% per annum.
In August 2009, the issue of restructuring was resolved in such a way that the bank simply received a controlling stake in one of the largest developers in the capital for a purely symbolic amount of 500 rubles. It was clarified that the parties agreed on the division of assets: VTB established control over housing construction, the developer retained objects in the field of commercial real estate.
At first glance, Andrei Kostin acted generously: he granted the former owners the right to buy back shares, but only after the debt burden to the state bank was reduced to a minimum. It would seem that Blazhko and Zelentsov should have made every effort to return the company they created, only for all subsequent years VTB continued to maintain control over it, and as a result, both “founding fathers” were generally excluded from its founders. There is no information about who currently owns JSC IC Donstroy in open sources, and the company itself is in the process of reorganization.
Unsafe houses of the company “Smart Service”
To date, VTB continues to be the main creditor of Donstroy, while the financial performance of the developer’s structures is far from ideal. So, at the end of 2020, the profit of JSC IC Donstroy amounted to a meager 117 thousand rubles with a revenue of 15.2 billion. Even more “impressive” are the data of Don-Stroy Invest JSC: for the same period, the company officially declared a colossal revenue of 22.3 billion rubles and a loss of 6.2 billion.
From this we can draw a logical conclusion: the developer does not have his own money, and those that are available are credit funds received, first of all, from VTB with the “light hand” of Mr. Kostin. But “Donstroy” has debts, and rather big ones: the total amount of claims brought against the developer (including the obligations of “subsidiary” companies) is estimated at 160 million rubles. Among the plaintiffs, LLC “MSK Group” is named – the management company in the houses built by “Don-Stroy Invest”. Moreover, according to media reports, the courts satisfy her statements literally one after another.
Here it would be appropriate to recall another management company serving Donstroy residential facilities – the one that received the notorious Smart Service, a “subsidiary” structure of Don-Stroy Invest, which was officially liquidated in March last year. By the way, her finances were also quite tight: according to the latest available data, in 2019, with a revenue of 19.4 million rubles, the losses of Smart Service LLC amounted to 932 million.
Residents of “sponsored” houses are waging a real war with the Criminal Code, sending complaints to all possible instances. They express their attitude in social networks and on specialized sites, where the work of Smart Service is assessed, at the mildest, as “terribly collective farm service” and “a bunch of thieves and crooks sitting on the neck of homeowners.” Recall that earlier the Criminal Code had a different name – “Donstroy Exploitation”, and since the moment of renaming the quality of its services has clearly not improved.
In 2016, Donstroy Exploitation was at the center of high-profile proceedings related to the death of 36-year-old Irina Volodina, which occurred as a result of an elevator crash in the elite Moscow residential complex Scarlet Sails. The court found the electrician Alexei Belousov guilty of the accident, sentencing him to 3.5 years in a penal colony. But as Lenta.Ru wrote, “what happened is not a tragic accident, but a natural mistake, which was caused by the negligence of many persons responsible for the safe operation of elevators in one of the most prestigious residential complexes in Moscow.”
Nevertheless, they managed to make Belousov extreme, who was not officially employed at Liftgarant LLC, which services Scarlet Parusov elevators under an agreement with Smart Service, did not have an electrical safety qualification group, and his certificate turned out to be expired due to failure to pass recertification. The situation is not just tragic, but also clearly demonstrates the specifics of the work of the Criminal Code. But the emergency did not end there. In December 2019, two people died as a result of a fire in a utility room in the “elite” Scarlet Sails.
Today, residents of another Moscow residential complex, Heart of the Capital, oppose the service of Smart Service. To ensure its further activities, the management company even hired a private security company and for some reason installed a fence around the complex, which was originally declared as “publicly accessible to residents.” But for the beneficiaries of the “daughters” of “Donstroy” it is easier to change the name once again than to solve the issue of poor service once and for all.
Beneficiaries behind the “screen” of the mutual fund
VTB has repeatedly made attempts to officially distance itself from Donstroy. In 2017, the CEO of Don-Stroy Invest, Alena Deryabina, told the media that the company’s shareholders were some five legal entities, but there was no bank among them. It is noteworthy that Deryabina herself, before settling in the developer’s management for a long time, held the posts of adviser to the vice president, head of the non-financial assets department and vice president of VTB. Thus, Kostin has been able to control the activities of the developer through his trustee for years.
The interests of a number of high-ranking government officials were linked with Donstroy. In particular, it was reported that its beneficiaries were hiding “behind the screen” of the Moscow Real Estate closed-end investment fund, and some of the intermediate owners could be affiliated with the former Deputy Prime Minister, the current head of the state corporation VEB. RF” by Igor Shuvalov and his wife Olga. In the environment of the official, the existence of such connections, of course, was categorically denied.
Nevertheless, at a certain stage, the connection between the investment fund and VTB can be traced. In particular, in July 2017, the shareholders of Moscow Real Estate decided to transfer the right to manage the company KL-Invest, which market participants associate with top managers and business partners of the credit institution. It is known, for example, that Arkady Ilyaguev, co-owner of KL-Invest Management Company, was on the board of directors of the Moscow Metallurgical Plant Sickle and Hammer, one of whose shareholders was the Bank of Moscow, whose accession to VTB was completed in May 2016.
In turn, shares of three CJSCs – Perspektiva, Invest-aktiv and Finansproekt, which were listed as co-owners of Donstroy Invest, were contributed to the Moscow Real Estate fund. Thus, the fund, and with it the developer, could well come under the control of a structure affiliated with VTB.
“Donstroy” in the orbit of state corporations
Another prominent official whose name “lit up” in the construction schemes of Andrei Kostin is the head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. Here you can recall the scandalous story with the land located in the center of Moscow, on the street. Sergey Makeev, 7, at the place of the former registration of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Design Bureau” Motor “- de jure liquidated structure, previously controlled by one of the enterprises of the space corporation – TsENKI (“Center for the operation of ground-based space infrastructure”).
Last autumn, a new legal entity was unexpectedly registered at the same address – Specialized Developer Makeeva LLC, the founder of which was the Don-Stroy Invest company. However, soon it turned out to be hastily re-registered, and its new location was the underground floor in the house number 70, on the street. Mosfilmovskaya, according to media reports, is an ordinary garage. These strange metamorphoses allowed journalists to assume that Mr. Kostin and Mr. Rogozin decided to start up the territory of the state corporation with an area of 4.8 hectares, where it is quite possible to place up to 120 thousand square meters of housing. It was also reported that two years earlier, Donstroy allegedly ordered an assessment of the future construction site. But the publicity in the press and telegram channels violated such far-reaching plans.
If everything described is true, then the person who let the situation out of control could be the odious businessman Roman Gromozdov, the beneficiary of the Perspektiva Invest Group company, who makes money on capital real estate, the construction of which is financed by the state bank. There is an opinion that it was Kostin who entrusted him with informal control over the structures of Donstroy. Gromozdov’s influence is explained by his close acquaintance with VTB Deputy Chairman Andrey Puchkov, who, in turn, is considered the “right hand” of the head of the credit institution.
However, Gromozdov’s connections are not limited to Puchkov alone. On the net, you can find references to the businessman’s joint commercial projects with the near-Kremlin oligarchs, the Rotenberg brothers. And back in 2014, he gained control over the Serp i Molot plant, which was in the process of bankruptcy, whose board of directors, we recall, included Arkady Ilyaguev, the co-owner of KL-Invest, already mentioned above, who is closely associated with VTB.
Finally, we should mention the interest in Donstroy on the part of the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. The oil monopoly is connected with the developer through the KL Development company, the founder of which until last December was SK Donstroy JSC. To date, its official owner is Special Construction Company Otdelfinstroy and Partners LLC, owned by two legal entities – LLC SZ Otdelfinstroy and JSC SZ KSK Group. In turn, the holder of the register of shareholders of JSC SZ KSK Group is the company Reestr-RN, which is part of the structure of the oil giant.
Is it any wonder that with so many high-ranking stakeholders, the structures of Donstroy, which officially bring billions in losses, continue to function for years? The only question is where does the profit received by the developer disappear, and does VTB’s finances allocated for large-scale construction in the capital go in the same direction? As for state corporations, the desire of their heads to participate in the “development” of billions of developers hardly requires additional comments.
vlasti.info